Raise minimum wage? City shows why it's not so simple

Feb. 8, 2014
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Fernando de la Cruz, 38, a grocery store clerk who makes the $8 state minimum, studies English as a second language at home with his daughters, from left, Fernanda, 13, Esmira, 12, and Keysha, 4. Fernando arrived in Lawrence last year from the Dominican Republic. / Josh T. Reynolds for USA TODAY

by Rick Hampson, USA TODAY

by Rick Hampson, USA TODAY

LAWRENCE, Mass. - In this city, where a century ago workers staged one of America's greatest industrial strikes, people again are arguing about a living wage - but not the minimum wage bill President Obama proposed in his State of the Union message.

Massachusetts has its own minimum: 75 cents above the federal rate of $7.25 an hour. And now the state Legislature is considering whether to raise the minimum wage over the next three years to $11, which would be among the highest in the nation.

With legislative stalemate in Washington and increasing concern nationwide over income inequality, the minimum wage fight is shifting to states such as Massachusetts, which in 1912 became the first to enact minimum wage legislation.

Lawrence, the site in that year of the epic "Bread and Roses'' textile strike, is today the state's poorest city. Nearly three-quarters of its 76,000 residents are Hispanic, and more than a third are foreign-born.

With many small businesses and about 9,500 hourly workers in the region who make between $8 and $10.50, according to an analysis by an advocacy group, Lawrence illustrates what's at stake in the wage debate.

George Bonfiglio and his wife, Sheila, own the Three Dogz Diner, which overlooks the Great Stone Dam, built between 1845 and 1848. The dam and its canals produced the power that helped make Lawrence's mills the world's greatest source of worsted wool - 2 million yards a week.

He's a former union carpenter sidelined by the recession. She used to work for a bank. Four years ago, they started the restaurant, Sheila says, because "we figured people always have to eat.'' Around here, that often means "chicken barb'' - seasoned pulled turkey and chicken with lettuce and mayo on a grilled roll.

George, 60, says a raise in the minimum wage would force them to reduce their three employees' hours, or worse - "shut this place down and just do takeout.'' Thinking about it makes him mad: "It's going to end up hurting the people it's supposed to help.''

He means people like Fernando de la Cruz, a 38-year-old immigrant from the Dominican Republic who works for the legal minimum $8 an hour as a grocery store stock clerk.

De la Cruz, who says that he and his wife, Mabel, make about $2,000 a month between them - more than half of which goes to rent, utilities and gas for their 14-year-old Chevy Malibu - sees the issue differently.

A raise in the minimum wage, he says, is the only way he can begin to save for his three daughters' educations, or buy a computer so they won't have to walk to the library in all kinds of weather to do homework.

"When those who do the work share the benefits,'' he says in Spanish, through an interpreter, "that is democracy.''

Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia already have minimum wages higher than the federal one. Obama wants to increase the federal rate for all workers to $10.10 an hour over two years, and then index it to inflation.

In the absence of federal action, at least 20states are considering their own minimum wage increases, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Already this year, minimum wage workers in five states have had raises authorized last year. In another ten, smaller increases linked to inflation have taken or will take effect.

POLITICALLY POPULAR

Raising the minimum wage is politically popular - "like motherhood and apple pie,'' says Ralph Wilbur, 81, who runs a printing business in Lawrence. "Who doesn't want a raise?'' More than seven in 10 U.S. voters support an increase, according to a Quinnipiac University poll.

â?¢ Steve Reppucci is a former computer software designer who 10 years ago co-founded Mad Maggie's Ice Cream shop (Maggie's his wife). He says most of his 15 to 25 employees (the number depends on the season) are students who work part time to cover incidental costs. They don't see the big picture, he says. "When I tell them about (the proposed rise in) the minimum wage, they say, 'Oh, that's great!' They don't think about what it'll be like when they're one of three people on a shift in the summer, instead of five.''

â?¢ Yaritza Perez is a sophomore at Northern Essex Community College who works part time as an $8-an-hour fitting room attendant at a discount clothes store. She and her twin sister are the first members of their family to attend college, and she's saving for her move next fall to a four-year school. Because her parents also work at low-wage jobs and can't help with school costs, "I can use a raise,'' she says, "and it would benefit our city.''